Lure Of Tinseltown Lingers Even From This Slice Of Southern Exposure

HEYDAYS

Lately there's been a lot of propaganda in my mail, clippings, promotional handouts, even a $20 book, aimed at older people, with this message: ''It's not later than you think.''

The pep talks go on and on: ''Just because you're retired, just because you're 60, or 70, or 80, it doesn't mean that the door of life - as you once knew it - has been slammed in your face.''

True, true, but I think we already know that, those of us who've been smart enough and lucky enough to make it this far.

Also found in the propaganda are well-intended exhortations about it never being too late to consider a second career. Does that excite you? I've already had about half a dozen careers, and I'm definitely not looking for another - well, unless, don't laugh, I could become a big movie star.

How about you? Wasn't there a time in your life when you craved to be a big movie star?

Didn't you ever believe you could outdo those slick-haired actors or shrill, fast-talking actresses who were dragging down thousands of bucks per week for mugging on the screen while millions of their Depression-dazed fellow Americans were living in boxcars and Hoovervilles, standing in soup and bread lines?

Well, maybe it's not too late.

In recent years there have been any number of stories about older folks hitting the jackpot as actors. Their names for the moment escape me, except for Peg Phillips. A news clipping about her surfaced on my desk today.

She, like I, was a star-struck kid. But the Depression and other vicissitudes of life sidetracked her from attending drama school - until at the age of 65. Pretty soon she was landing a string of film parts, and today, at 75, she's a stable star in a television series called Northern Exposure.

You might know Peg Phillips as Ruth-Anne, sagacious storekeeper in the outrageously fictional village of Cicely. And now, glory be, real people stand in line for her autograph.

Is it too late for me? I went to Hollywood after the war (WWII) with a letter from a personal friend of a major studio boss that admitted me to the lot and the mogul's waiting room.

Ah, this was the Tinseltown I'd rhapsodized about. The carpet was so thick and deep, it took half a minute to furrow to the secretary's desk. I'm convinced it was designed with that in mind - to zap the starch out of starry-eyed actors.

I never did get in to see how deep the carpet was in the big shot's office, and after knocking futilely on other doors, I threw in the towel - my threadbare rooming-house towel.

And I hitched a ride back to the real world of America's midlands, figuring I'd rather starve as a writer than an actor. Funny, I almost did. But writing has furnished me with Florida retirement, marriage to the starlet of my dreams, a place where I exult in my tranquil, small slice of Southern exposure.

Sure, being a big movie star might have been fun, for a little time anyway, but it's too late to be pining about that now.